M. Christian is the most phenomenal erotic short story writer - ever! He is wildly diverse. Think heterosexual, gay, lesbian, threesomes, robots, technorata and other interesting objects against crazy settings, like historical, futuristic, present day and virtual reality. And the characters - immortals, robots, prostitutes, pornography photographer, spiritualists, technophiles, androids, police officers, and humans just like us. M. Christian redefines sex, love and bdsm. And the greatest part about M. Christian's work is that he has something for everyone and in perfectly crafted bite size short stories for every appetite. (I have previously reviewed Blow Up and Beep, both of which I found hilarious and on a light, funny side.) Every lover of romance needs to read at least one of M. Christian's books, and I have two fantastic recommendations for you today - The Bachelor Machine and Rude Mechanicals.

The Bachelor Machine consists of 18 short stories. Some are light and funny, others are quite sexual, and others are somewhat grim. There are a wide array of characters, guaranteeing that no two stories will be the same. What I love most about The Bachelor Machine is the surprise. You finish a story feeling shocked, in awe, and thinking differently about sex, and when you read the title of the next short story, it gives nothing away as to the contents it holds secret. I feel like it challenges you in a way. "You won't know what this is about until you read me." Yes, that is how it mocked me. So I read the next story, having my world completely thrown into chaos over and over again. The same is true for Rude Mechanicals. This title features four fantastic shorts and two novellas. Just as hot, as provocative, and as daring as his previous work, M. Christian once again stretches your mind to its sexual limits. Perfect for those long, warm winter nights, or shorts spurts of lag time during your hectic day. Priced just right, you can grab both (22 shorts and 2 novellas) for under $12. That's definitely a steal. I promise these titles won't let you imagination down.

In the words of M. Christian, "Imagination is Intelligence with an Erection!"

Monday, July 30, 2012

This is very special flashback: a lovely review of my science fiction/horror/just-plain-weird collection, Love Without Gun Control, by my wonderful pal, Billierosie .Thanks, sweetie!

I am a junkie! A poor pathetic thing, crawling up the walls, shredding fragments of wallpaper and plaster beneath my broken finger nails, screaming for my next fix. Hollow eyed, I plead with M.Christian for just one more story. He’s a hard man. He turns away, telling me it’s for my own good. Then finally, finally, he relents. And I blubber my thanks through a mess of snot, spit and tears.

M.Christian sends me LOVE WITHOUT GUN CONTROL. And like any true addict, I find a vein, stick in the needle and overwhelm myself with the fix.

I’ve read all of his stories. Every tantalising word he’s ever written. I worry that one day he’ll stop. No more stories. What the hell will I do?

You see he never fails to surprise me. His stories move seamlessly from straight erotica to gay erotica and now, in LOVE WITHOUT GUN CONTROL, he gives me a collection of science fiction and horror.

In ‘Needle Taste,’ there is haunting despair, from the disciples of Owlsley, a serial killer. They take mind bending chemicals to enhance his hideous deeds. His followers can’t leave him alone and live in a desperate, deadly fascination of what has happened to those he has brutalised and killed. Prair replays the final moments of Owlsley’s capture in his mind and repeats the killer’s mantra; “the only sin is letting them go unpunished.”

‘The Rich Man’s Ghost’, reads like a fable and Christian tells the story with the skill of Aesop. Hiro Yashido sees a ghost, and to see a ghost means doom. He has not only seen the ghost, the ghost has seen him. His wealth, his overwhelming success in high finance is nothing. He will have to embrace his worst nightmare, poverty. Hiro Yashido fears nothing. He has not achieved his great wealth by walking on tiptoe. But he does fear the ghost and it’s curse. Ghosts walk between the bite and the bytes of the datasea and they are jealous. Hiro Yashido works hard to dispel the ghost’s curse and the ghost ponders on whether, or not to release him.

‘Wanderlust’, takes us out on the road. The story reads like a classic ‘road’ film and we embark on the archetypal American journey. The landscape unfolds with panoramic camera sweeps; gasping, breathtaking images of mountains, snow, jagged peaks and windswept pines. A cheap doll, embodies the idea of perfection, of absolute love. It is conveyed to the driver in his own overwhelming, Christ like beauty. He stops at a roadside gas station. The people he meets are spellbound by the ecstasy of his beauty. But sheer love has its opposite and hatred, and ugliness and the abject fear it brings, must have its say. He wants to say sorry. But all that he can do is drive away.

In ‘Orphans’, Christian gives us a drifter, seemingly, a man without purpose. He hitches lifts and meets people. Is he running from something, or running to something? He doesn’t know. Or he won’t say. What is the virus they speak of; the wasting disease that has taken their loved ones? Is it loneliness? Or is it something else? He apologises, it’s all he can do. Is this an allegory, a story for our times? Christian doesn’t tell us; but he certainly makes us think.

As if all that weren’t enough, Christian retells the story of Robinson Crusoe in ‘Friday’.

Combining Daniel Defoe’s style with a futuristic slant, the traveller’s ship crashes into the earth. Like Defoe’s hero he is stranded, like him he has to improvise to survive and like him he has his Friday.

As I said earlier, what the hell will I do if M.Christian ever stops writing? There’s a gem here, a jewel, a real talent. Where does all of this come from? Where does he get his ideas and images? “…eyes as dark as knots in old trees…” “…titles for them were as irrelevant as trying to take apart a static charge before a lightening strike…” Beats me! I’ve saved the title story until last. ‘Love Without Gun Control,’ and I’m going to read it now! Excuse me while I drool!

I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect when Love Without Gun Control showed up to be reviewed. The cover is very retro-pulp-comic, a scene on Mars, all bright colors and simple lines, misleading as to the content. It seems more like a graphic-novel cover, or a series of 70's porn. The book itself is quite thin, only 155 pages. I was pleasantly surprised. The collection opens with the eponymous story, ‘Love Without Gun Control’, published for the first time in this collection. Ultra-violent and rather bizarre, it is somewhat reminiscent of a D. Harlan Wilson story. A sort of modern-day Western romance, the story really does defy labeling as it shows the effects of one snake-oil doctor’s ‘love potion’, applied erroneously, and the destruction that can come from thwarted desire. A fun, rollicking ride with a very unique flavor.

The second story, ‘Needle Taste’, is a unique concept with an ambiguous ending. The story itself is a totally different beast from the previous tale, but the wistful tone holds up the strange story well enough until the end, when it feels a little... abrupt. If there’s a weak one in the bunch, it’s this one, simply on a relative scale. It is in no way a bad one, it just doesn’t have quite the force of the others.

‘Hush Hush’ is my favorite story in the collection. The language is absolutely beautiful: weird, eery and slippery. The tale is half mystery, half internal journey. Whether he solves the mystery or not is really unimportant. What he learns along the way is not. This was a lovely to read for the language as for the story.

‘The Rich Man’s Ghost’ is probably my least favorite of the stories. It lacks the smoothness of voice, the weird beauty of most of the other pieces. The story is a little less Weird, too, and maybe that colors my opinion.

‘Wanderlust’ is one of the stories that I’m not really sure, at first, how I feel about it. On the one hand, the reader is kept in the dark until the very end of the story. I simply didn’t have a clue what was going on. On the other hand, the writing is very rich, so it isn’t necessarily a bad thing to enjoy the ride. A man who inspires absolute ecstasy from everyone he meets comes across a bit thin at first, but their reactions if he stays around for longer than a few minutes are... interesting.

‘Orphan’ is chilling and haunting. A young man running from something, to something, carrying a horrible secret. There were a couple of places that could have used a clarity edit or that read a little contrived, but overall, definitely a memorable piece worth reading again.

Really, though, I’d be hard-pressed to say that any story in this collection is best skipped over or read in a hurry. There’s just enough variation in the stories to keep them unique, and enough cohesion to develop a voice that just draws me in more deeply, the farther I read. (The first story is an odd difference to the rest of them, but no less enjoyable.) The cover-art remains a sticking point, as it has no apparent connection to the content, and prose like this needs something lovely to wrap it up, and what it has is not something I would be wild about displaying on a shelf.

Read this one slowly, because each story is best savored and mulled over. And I’ll be keeping an eye out for more of M. Christian’s stories.

Friday, July 27, 2012

In Clifford D. Simak's short story, "So Bright The Vision," fiction writing has been replaced by machines called yarners - that chug out stories or books on demand. Well, someone's taken that idea into erotica with The Fifty Shades Generator - a site that will create pornographic passages in the style of ... well, you guessed it:

"The feeling of his man fat seeping down my throat got my fallopian fish stock flowing quicker than a greased weasel shit. The mixture of footlong fudge bullet and cock custard in my puckered brown eye created the delicious rectoplasm that he was so fond of. The seemingly neverending streams of penis pudding eminating from his throbbing quim dagger soon had me coated like a plasterer's radio. By now, my gashtray was leaching like a broken fridge freezer. Inserting a squash into my hot pocket got me spraying fallopian fish stock faster than a greased weasel shit."

Technorotica is a compendium of two previous M. Christian books, Better than the Real Thing and Rude Mechanicals, accompanied by an excerpt from Painted Doll (previously reviewed here) closing out the volume. Two of the stories previously appeared in Circlet Press’s The Bachelor Machine (reviewed here), while two others appeared in the Circlet anthologies Selling Venus and Up for Grabs 2.

Some readers may initially feel that Technorotica constitutes one of those “best of” albums whose contents fail to gel into a thematic whole, perhaps appreciated more for its individual parts, especially since some stories explore such science fiction conceits as cybernetics and collective consciousness, while others plod the more real-world territory of matchmaking over the modem or even having sex with a blow-up toy ball. But therein lies the rub (pun intended), for by including such an array of stories, M. Christian reminds us that our sexuality is already augmented with things “unnatural;” that human beings, social creatures that we are, already get off using a variety of apparatus developed by our society–or, to put it another way, handcuffs and riding crops don’t occur in nature, y’all. The title character in “Billie” reaches the heights of bliss riding her Harley Davidson, while Pell in “Speaking Parts” is driven to distraction by the bionic eye of her lover-to-be Arc, a “masterpiece watch set in a crystal sphere, the iris a mandala of glowing gold.” Failed lawyer Stanley in “KSRN” dreams his dreams of wealth and power, of women like commodities, owned: “Their skin became polished, imported. Their bodies took on the lines of fine European manufacturers… Their breasts gleamed chrome, the highlights of their curves reflecting into the night, into his eyes–airflow eroticism, calling to him.” Meanwhile, the prostitute Fields in “State” acts the part of an android for high dollar customers who would probably be repelled to learn of her true humanity.

Just as we homo sapiens have tweaked our consciousnesses with a variety of substances since the earliest days of our species, so, too, have we augmented our sexuality. As Lenore Tiefer titled her groundbreaking book, Sex Is Not a Natural Act, and it never has been. If there is a common theme tying together these stories, tying together the simple and sweet tale of a couple’s first use of a vibrator with that of a person who hires out her body by a form of remote control, then that’s it. Sex is not a natural act, and it never has been.

The artist Mark Rothko famously quipped, “Certain people always say we should go back to nature. I notice they never say we should go forward to nature.” And that is where M. Christian takes us in this collection–forward to nature. Forward–to discover our natures.

She is wearing spandex pants decorated with the bold black and white icons of half a dozen Tokyo corporations. Her hair is in dreads, spiced with glittering watch parts. Her shoes are new and intelligent, contouring to her feet as she runs out of the crowd towards the place. Her poncho is tiger-striped, the newest Eurotrash fad, and the by- standers can see, as she pumps those strong legs in those black and white spandex pants, that she doesn’t have a top on, and that her nip- ples (flashing out from under the red and black of the poncho) are only covered by crosses of black electrical tape. She is a mix of black and something else. All can see—even in the midnight glare of Broad- way’s brilliance of neon, lasers, fluorescents, and headlights from blur- ring cars—is that her skin is a brown like stained wood. Her face is high-cheeked, her lips dark brown, her eyes hidden behind mirrored image-intensifying glasses.

She is running for her life: down the street, through the sidewalk crowd, panic in her strides, panting breaths.

It is drizzling, like static.The muscles at the door to the place don’t like it because it messes up their radar goggles. The clients don’t like it because it gets their furs and leathers all wet. The street drek don’t like it because it pisses off the money and the muscles and they usu- ally take it out on whoever is closest and can’t afford to fight back. The limos come and go, a high-class and costly river of black plastic and steel.The rich’s banter is light and sparkling above the rain, and it blends, as only it could in the 21st century, with the chatter from the muscle’s narrow-band radios.

She runs through the crowd, pushing streetdrek and citizens aside, glancing back over her shoulder at every opportunity. Panic lights her muscles, her stride, and she looks for someone to—

The words finally come out in an oscillating scream as she slams against the first ring of genetically-enhanced, neurochemically boosted, electronically hot-wired thugs. True to their purpose, mis- sion, and few remaining authentic brain cells, they smash back, sur- rounding her with dense muscle and squealing radios, and push her back into the crowd.

Her hands are grasping claws, her nails draw blood in a triad streak down the face of one of them (who doesn’t blink against his condi- tioning), and her legs hammer against his ballistic-nylon pants. Her scream sounds like some kind of a weapon, and the few cheap, off-the- shelf guards pull their own weapons and track the high windows around and up—unable to distinguish one crazed woman from an armed assault squad.

Then an arm snakes out of the crowd and, with a clean, sure swipe, slices her throat ear to ear.

The city is big, but not so big as to make the woman’s throat open- ing up and the resulting fine fanning spray of arterial blood com- monplace. A muscle reacts first, being now freckled with potentially dangerously infected blood, and draws and aims... at nothing but the already twitchy street. At the sight of the weapons being quickly drawn and dropped to street level, anyone who has any kind of survival skills instantly turns and runs.To a street of people used to sudden urban vi- olence, turning and running is called a riot. Luckily for the muscle and the few really innocent bystanders, the riot has a place to go: down the street like water down a cascade, away from the Men With Guns, away from the dangerous Blood, away from the Rich People being thrown into their cars by their overreacting bodyguards.

The street is nearly quiet very soon after, save for the wailing of an approaching ambulance, called in a moment of rare altruism by one of the suits, and the last foaming, crackling bubbles from the woman’s throat.

"Built at a cost of 10 billion yen (they say...), the Robot Restaurant in Japan combines garish lighting, with female robots and flesh & blood cabaret girls for a hallucinatory experience that will hopefully do for the jaded, thrill-seeking salarymen of Japan what “Chuck E. Cheese” does for little kids. For an entrance fee of around US$37.00, patrons and stare slack-jawed as enormous pink haired robots roll around controlled by comely “pilots”.

In truth, the joint is more like a cabaret club, than an actual restaurant. Three measly food items in all are listed on the menu, a perfunctory measure probably because it's easier to get a license for food service than to apply for a “giant robots plus army girls and marching bands and motorcycles” license. Either way, here’s wishing the Shinjuku Kabukicho Robot Restaurant the very best of luck as it awkward rolls the human race one step closer to a well-deserved Robopocalypse."

Tourmaline and onyx. Silver and gold. A masterpiece watch set in a crystal sphere, the iris a mandala of glowing gold. Her blinks were a camera shutter’s, as imagined by the archetypal Victorian engineer but built by surgical perfection not found anywhere in Pell’s knowledge. The woman’s left eye was jeweled and precise, clicking softly as the woman looked around the gallery, as if the engineers who’d removed her original wet, gray-lensed ball had orchestrated a kind of music to go with their marvelous creation: a background tempo of perfect watch movements to accompany whatever she saw through their marvelous and finely crafted sight. Click, click, click.

An eye like that should have been in a museum, not mounted in a socket of simple human skin and bone, Pell had thought. It should have been in some other gallery, some better gallery, allowed only to look out at, to see other magnificent creations of skilled hands. Jare’s splashes of reds and blues, his shallow paintings were an insult to the real artistry of the woman’s eye.

Pell didn’t like to remember first seeing her that way – through the technology in her face. But it felt, to her, like it had its own kind of ironic perfection to deny it. So Pell lived with the biting truth that she didn’t, at first, see Arc – for her eye.

But later, right after she got momentarily lost in the beauty of Arc’s implant, the woman looked at Pell with her real eye, the gray, penetrating right one – and Pell forgot about the tourmaline, onyx, silver and gold machine.

She had finally seen Arc, herself – the woman, and not the simple, mechanical part. Next to her, the eye was cheap junk: a collection of metal, old rocks, and wires.

* * * *

She wasn’t Arc at first. She began as just the woman with the perfectly created eye. Then she was the beautiful woman. Then she was the woman where she didn’t belong. Seeing her eye, then seeing her, Pell lastly saw her as oil, the kind of oil you’d see pooling in the street, that had somehow managed to make its way into a glass of wine. Agreed, it was cheap red wine – something out of a box and not even a bottle, but, still – she was oil. She didn’t belong and that was obvious, despite the cheapness of the gallery. She could tell, cataloging her bashed and scuffed boots, noting her threadbare jeans, her torn T-shirt, that amid clean jeans and washed (and too black) turtlenecks, she was a discordant tone among the harmonious poseurs in Jare’s tiny South of Market studio.

The woman was aware of her discrepancy. She wandered the tiny gallery with a very large plastic tumbler of vin very ordinare, stopping only once in a while to look at one of Jare’s paintings.

Holding her wine tight enough to gently fracture the cheap plastic with cloudy stress lines, Pell watched her, stared at the tall – all legs and angles, broad and strong – woman with the artificial eye. She tried not to watch her too closely or too intently, sure that if she let slip her fascination she’d scare her off – or worse, bring on an indifferent examination of Pell. Through a sad ballet of a slightly curved lip and a stare that was nothing more than a glance of the eyes, the woman would see Pell but wouldn’t – and that would be an icy needle in Pell’s heart.

Pell had already taken too many risks that night. She already felt like she’d stepped off the edge and had yet to hit the hard reality of the ground. Traps and tigers, beasts and pitfalls for the unwary loomed all around Pell. She moved through her days with a careful caution, delicately testing the ice in front of her, wary of almost-invisible, murky lines of fault. She knew they were there, she’d felt the sudden falling of knowing she’d stepped too far, moved too quickly, over something that had proven, by intent or accident, not to be there. Pell didn’t push on the surface, didn’t put all her weight, or herself, on anything.

But then everything changed. She’d seen Arc and her eye.

The plastic cup chimed once, then collapsed in on itself. Turning first into a squashed oval, the glass cracked, splintered, then folded, the white seams of stress turning into sharp fissures of breakage. The red, freed of its cheap plastic prison, tumbled, cascaded out and down onto her.

Pell had worn something she knew wouldn’t fit with the rest of the crowd. The official color of San Francisco, she knew, would fill the place with charcoal and soot, midnight and ebony. White, she’d decided, would pull some of their eyes to her, make her stand out – absence of color being alone in a room full of people dressed in all colors, combined.

"Looks good on you."

The shock of the wine on her white blouse tumbled through Pell as an avalanche of warmth flowed to her face. The decision to wear white that night had come from a different part of herself, a part that had surprised her. Now she was furiously chastising that tiny voice, that fashion terrorist who had chosen the blouse over other, blacker ones.

And so Pell responded, "Not as good as you would" to the tall, leggy, broad shouldered girl with the artificial eye. Which was beautiful, but not as beautiful as the rest of her.

* * * *

Pell’s reason for being at the gallery was Jare. Although she could never wrap her perceptions around the gaunt boy’s paintings, she still came when he asked. Jare, Pell, Fallon, Rasp and Jest. They weren’t close – but then foxhole buddies aren’t always. They weren’t in combat, but they could be. All it would take would be one computer talking to another – no stable job history, thus conscription.

All it took were two computers, passing pieces of information back and forth. Till that happened, they hid and watched the possibility of a real foxhole death in a hot, sweaty part of Central America fly by.

Foxhole buddies. It was Jare’s term – some fleck of trivia that’d hung around him. They didn’t have an official name for their tiny society of slowly (and in some cases not too slowly) starving artists, but Pell was sure that Jare would smile at his trivial term being immortalized among a band of too-mortal kids.

That was Jare. While the rest of them tried to focus on pulling their paintings (Pell, Jare, and Rasp), music (Jest), and sculpture (Fallon) as high as they could, there was something else about Jare – something, like his paintings, that refused to be understood. His techniques were simple enough, broad strokes of brilliant color on soot-black canvas, but his reasons were more convoluted.

Or maybe, Pell had thought earlier that evening (before turning a white blouse red and seeing the woman with the artificial eye for the first time) both man and his work were simple: broad, bold statements designed to do nothing but catch attention. He was like his paintings, a grab for any kind of attention – an explanation too simple to be easily seen.

In the tiny bathroom, Pell tried to get the wine out of her blouse. Contradictory old wives’ tails: first she tried cold, then hot water. The sink ran pink and so, soon, did her blouse.

The woman with the eye stood outside the door, a surprisingly subtle smile on her large mouth. Every once and a while she’d say something, as if throwing a bantering line to the shy girl inside to keep her from drowning in embarrassment.

"Who’s he foolin? I can do better crap than this with a brush up my ass.”

"You should see this chick’s dress. Looks like her momma’s – and momma didn’t know how to dress, either.”

"Too many earrings, faggot. What year do you think this is?

"Hey, girl. Get out here with that shirt. It’s better looking than this fucking stuff on the walls."

Cold water on her hands, wine spiraling down the sink. Distantly, Pell was aware that her nipples were hard and tight – and not from the chill water. Down deep and inside, she was wet. It was a basic kind of primal moisture, one that comes even in the burning heat of humiliation. Finally, the blouse was less red than before. Planning to run to where she’d dropped her old leather coat to hide the stigmata of her clumsiness, her excitement in two hard brown points, she opened the door.

The tall woman smiled down at her, hot and strong. In one quick sweep of her eyes, Pell drank her tall length, strong shoulders, columnar legs. She was trapped, held fast between the hot eyes she knew must have been staring at her, pinning her straight to her embarrassment, and the presence of the woman.

Her eye, the eye, clicked a quick chime of precision – as if expanding its limits to encompass the totality of Pell. Pell did not mind her intense examination. It added, with a rush of feelings, to the quaking in her belly, the weakness in her knees.

"Gotta splash. Wait right here,” Arc said.

Of course she waited.

After a few hammering heartbeats, the door opened and she came out – butchly tucking her T-shirt back into her jeans – and Pell was again at the focus of her meticulously designed sight.

"You live anywhere close? I’m tired of this shit. You?"

"Down the block. Just on the corner," Pell said, trying hard not to smile too much.

The woman downed the small sample of red in her glass and, looking for a place to put it down, and not finding any, just dropped it with a sharp plastic clatter on the floor. "Show me. It can’t be worse than here. Too many fucking artists."

Monday, July 16, 2012

Carol Queen’s B-Day Ho-Down!!Friday, July 20, 7:30pm: A benefit for the Center for Sex & Culture

At The Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd. St.$10-50 sliding scale

Celebrating 55 somewhat long, often strange, and mostly sexy trips around the sun, Carol has asked many of her favorite performers to come out and entertain her — and YOU! On the bill so far we welcome:

The music & sheer stunning presence of the one and only cabaret star MegaFlameMore fabulous artistes still being added!

Plus we’ll pull some auction items together, or figure out some other way to win/buy/acquire fabulous stuff.

It’s Dr. Carol Queen’s Birthday month, which I always use for aCenter for Sex & Culture fund drive; can you contribute? It will culminate with a birthday show/fundraiser and shindig at the Make-Out Room on July 20, so please save the date. (Performers, I am still putting this together — let me know if you want to participate, I’ll see how many slots I still have to work with…!)

CSC is working on a bare-bones budget these days, and has made many fabulous improvements to the space since we moved in, mostly via our own cash flow. We would like to retire our credit card debt this summer which was mainly associated with getting moved in, and your donations will go towards that purpose and toward bridging us over the always-lean month of August, when all y’all go wear peacock feathers on the playa.

Checks here: 2261 Market St #455-A SF CA 94114 Credit card donations: Wads of cash can be stuffed into our pockets at any opportunity! And ANY amount helps us move this fabulous one-of-a-kind, all-volunteer, labor of sex-positive love into the future. We have people coming to enjoy our library now, and a pack of scholars coming next month to swarm the archives and extract bits of amazing info; we have the most wonderful volunteer staff and interns coming from all over, all because the Center for Sex & Culture EXISTS!Please help us stay stable and able to provide space for all these amazing things we (and our communities) do. Pass this note on to others if you can. Wishing us all mondo pleasure! xox—CQ

Friday, July 13, 2012

As my continuing celebration of the re-release of my cyberpunk/erotic novel, Painted Doll, here's a review of the book from Forum UK:

In an unnamed Japanese city of the near future, Domino is a highly sought- after erotist, who uses a combination of skilful words and paints loaded with unforgettable sexual experience. However, the icily perfect Domino is only a façade, an identity created to protect American Claire from a killer who is on her trail. Meanwhile, Claire’s girlfriend, Flower, has been sent to a hippy commune in New Zealand, also for her own protection. The girls only have their memories, which they share in increasingly explicit letters, to keep the relationship alive, but both live in hope that one day they will be reunited...

The Painted Doll is a dark erotic novel, set in a world where the United States as we know them have been destroyed and the only safe haven is the hi-tech world across the Pacific. M. Christian weaves a clever tale of love and loss, slowly dripping in the details of Flower and Claire’s back story as events builds to a startlingly unexpected conclusion. Domino’s sessions with her clients are designed to explore how large a part emotion plays in any sexual encounter, and as the men who visit her as manipulated to climax by her words and her paints, she begins to realise that it isn’t always the most obvious scenarios which will push anyone’s erotic buttons. This is one for lovers of speculative fiction, rather than the general reader, but it’s memorable and skilfully done.

In the 1980s, I read an article about some noted visionaries of the bold future of virtual reality. The visionaries uniformly denied that virtual sex would be a factor in this brave new technology. Apparently the visionaries hadn't noticed that several existing technologies were significantly subsidized by sex, among them the phone companies (by 900 numbers), Big Pharma (by The Pill), and the new videotape industry (by X-rated sales and rentals). Here in the Twenty-First Century, though we're still waiting for VR, phone companies enjoy the additional subsidy of surfers seeking X-rated websites, penile implants and Viagra keep multinational medical companies big in the stock market, and video stores add X-rated DVDs.

SF authors are bolder, or maybe just less blind, than the VR visionaries; they routinely incorporate varieties of cybersex in their fiction. But SF authors rarely center plot and theme on sex, and the professional and semiprofessional SF magazines rarely publish speculative sex stories. Yet the enormous sexual changes of the last few years, both trivial (porn spam) and profound (legalized gay/lesbian marriage in Canada), demand more SF exploration of the subject. Fortunately, on the small-press margins of SF, at the border shared with the erotica genre, a few writers are speculating intelligently and imaginatively about the future of sex. Among the best-known and best of the erotic-SF writers is M. Christian.

The stories in his new collection, The Bachelor Machine, pass the litmus tests of both the SF and erotica genres. Take out the tech and there's no story; take out the sex and there's no story. This description may lead those unfamiliar with SF erotica to suspect that every story is about getting off with the aid of futuristic technologies, and that's true as far as it goes. But that's not going nearly far enough.

The stories in The Bachelor Machine are not about sex, though they're stuffed with sexual acts; the stories are about what sex means. M. Christian is writing about the psychology of being human, and he often does so by exploring sexual possibilities and realities that are rarely discussed, even in private conversation. He not only thinks forbidden thoughts, he extrapolates them in the finest SF fashion.

The aptly named "Technophile" pushes technofetishism to the ultimate as it explicates an idea most authors (especially male authors) would never imagine, let alone write about. To put it bluntly, "Technophile" eroticizes castration. A character has his penis cut off and replaced with the top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art "Long Thrust." Another character wants to lose his virginity to the technological phallus, which he sees as hotter and better than the old-fashion flesh kind. But the cutting-edge implant needs a recharge and remains limp throughout the encounter, a bitter irony.

In the decaying post-industrial future of "Winged Memory", Dusk does something most people couldn't imagine, and would find horrifying if they did: he sells (and loses) his memory of losing his virginity. He does this to buy thirty minutes with a prostitute "walking the street, eyes available red." To have her again, Dusk keeps selling memories, until he doesn't know who he is, or who this woman is that he inexplicably wants.The stories "Bluebelle" and "Skin-Effect" break taboo by making explicit the sexual undercurrents of the savagery and killing in nearly every Hollywood cop and military action flick.

In "Guernica", several individuals meet secretly in a basement to enjoy sex acts outlawed by a repressive Twenty-First-Century government. Their practices, costumes, and toys deliberately, ironically, terrifyingly recreate the uniforms, actions, and tools of the cops who would arrest and punish — and kill — them.

In "Butterflies$", a hacker immersed in the full-sensory, Disney-perfect Glade of the Datasea finds herself assaulted — literally — by a flock of beautiful butterfly-sprites. I generally hate stories about rape/violation, yet Christian's skill, imagery, and insight kept me reading to the end... and I never felt violated by the story. It's an impressive achievement.

In "Hackwork", Rosselyn Moss works for ExpressTaxi as a body that cyber-riders hire to carry their consciousness around New Orleans. They dictate her actions and, inevitably, drive her body into sexual encounters. One night, she is distressed to find herself whipping a beautiful young stranger — and even more distressed to discover the stranger loves it.

Like Rosselyn, the narrator of "Switch" is a rent girl. She isn't a taxi, but she may have an even more troubling job, for she never remembers who her clients were, or what they did to her. M. Christian travels deep into taboo territory by demonstrating that, for some, being so thoroughly controlled, so completely owned as to remember nothing, is the ultimate turn-on.

In "Everything but the Smell of Lilies", Justine Moor is a whore with a deeply creepy specialty. She's been turned into "a hardwired dead girl, a chilling and stiffening hooker", dying over and over for money. If this bleeding-edge cyberpunk extrapolation isn't disturbing enough, Justine finds herself lying, a motionless but fully-conscious corpse, in an ambulance staffed by a necrophiliac. (In case it's not already abundantly clear, some stories in The Bachelor Machine are not intended to arouse.)

Many of M. Christian's grittily urban stories are cyberpunk; "Heartbreaker" pushes the form to a logical extreme. When an undercover cop sets up the bust of an outlaw biohacker, the two women don't just have sex, they withdraw very special interface cables from inside themselves and connect them: "Linked, each hardwired into the other's genitals, mixed and matched, they surged and merged."

In "Thin Dog", fans jack their minds into a full-sensory experience of what it's like to be superstar reactor-rock band Thin Dog. Members Johna, Paul, Georgina, and Jingo (ahem) play instruments that are nanotech implants woven through their bodies; playing includes on-"stage" couplings and quadruplings.

Some stories not only share 1980s-cyberpunk's fascination with Japanese culture, but show the influence of "anime" (Japanese animation). In many ways, the woman and situation in "State" are ideal for anime. The prostitute Fields lives in Japan and earns her living by pretending to be an almost mythically superior Japanese-made sex android. Her masquerade must always achieve perfection — from biochemically lowered body temperature, to "incredibly durable bonding polymer" applied daily to every millimeter of flesh, to behavior in orgasm — because her clients must never suspect she's human.Not every story is cyberpunk. "The New Motor" is an amusing steampunk entertainment set in Paul Di Filippo territory. Nineteenth-Century spiritualist John Murray Spear has a vision of "the Association of Electricizers... spirits with a mechanical turn of mind," and begins proselytizing for the creation of "the Physical Savior of the Race... the New Motor!" This charismatic messiah for "a new Age of Man Through Machine" leads his followers to transcendentalist New England, where they settle in the conservative town of Lynn, Massachusetts. Seducing and neglecting a particularly fervent follower proves seer Spear is dangerously blind to certain human truths.

The collection has some flaws. Some futures don't seem entirely plausible (a minor problem, and one hardly confined to the erotic-SF subgenre). A couple of stories are vague in their SFnal elements. I never quite figured out what "Bluebelle" was (a micro Death Star? a flying fembot? a round mecha?). It takes too long to learn what the futuristic technology is and does in "Eulogy". The endings of "Eulogy" and "Winged Memory" left me wondering just what was happening. And frustratingly, the book provides no copyright data, providing no information about if or when the stories were previously published.M. Christian's prose is strong and supple and sometimes lyrical. If you don't like naughty language or graphic descriptions of sex, you'd better steer clear of his work. But if you like smart, taboo-breaking SF, then read The Bachelor Machine.

“Love with robots will be as normal as love with other humans, while the number of sexual acts and lovemaking positions commonly practiced between humans will be extended, as robots teach more than is in all of the world’s published sex manuals combined.” -computer pioneer David Levy, in Love and Sex With Robots.

Bondage, science fiction, fetishism, real realities and virtual realities collide in this unique collection by one of the most popular authors of erotica … ever!

In the enigmatic M. Christian’s kinky new collection, two great things – technology and sex – go even better together!

Welcome to Technorotica: a giant-sized collection of human-machine erotica. You’ll find everything from sexy robots to virtual reality lovers, from shameless science fiction to contemporary explorations of technology’s impact on our sex lives and our sexuality. Headlining this stellar collection are two unforgettable novellas: In “Hot Definition,” the story of a future just around our corner, Neko experiences the ultimate domination in a way she never expected; in “Speaking Parts,” two lovers, one with a camera-shutter eye, come together in a scorching, obsessive relationship that takes them both to the limits of sexuality – and beyond. Plus ten more provocative stories of sex and technosex.

What makes this book so special is that it is made up of stories that have previously appeared in Maxim Jakubowski's excellent Mammoth Book of New Erotica series - an honor that still makes me giggle like a schoolgirl.

What's also cool about this new collection is that it has a little bit of everything ... for everyone: erotic science fiction, queer erotic stories, and more! It's quite literally a book for just about everyone.

The Color of Lust - A shark, seedy poolhall, and a wager ... Daisy knew the hustle but what she didn't count on was being played herself. But in the best possible way.... Everything But The Smell Of Lilies - In the near future, Justine is a sex worker with a unique twist: for a fee her clients can do whatever they want - including kill her. Everything is going well for her ... until, that is, she comes across an ambulance attendant with his own unique fetish. Betty Came - A sweet, and extra-hot, tale of longing and lesbian desire: what do you do when you know what you is so very wrong ... but feels so very right? Regrets - Sitting on a chair, arms on the desk, fingers on the keyboard, words on the screen-" the letter is a final goodbye from a fellow to the world he's wronged ... or is it? And if he didn't write it then who did? The New Motor - A steampunky tale of outrageous turn-of-the-century inventiveness: John Murray Spear created The New Motor, The Mechanical Savior, but it was a special woman who gave it a sexy spark of life ... and then some. NY by Way of Taos - In a trailer baking in the hot desert sun, two women lose themselves to desire and fantasy: going to new and, for them, unexplored sexual worlds ... like New York City

Thursday, July 5, 2012

... or, at least, I wrote about what I saw as the next logical step in personal computers. In Painted Doll, which I did a few years back - and is now available from Sizzler Editions - I wrote about an alternative culture in New Zealand that used an elegant head-mounted display:

(here's a bit about that, from a letter Flower wrote to her lover about this group - called the Noos - and their tech):

After dinner – did I
mention the glasses? Shit, forgot
about them. Easy to do, I guess. They're a huge part of the world here,
so big you don't even notice them.
Gave me my pair after the first week. They called them iglasses, a joke they say no one under
forty understands. Which I'm not,
so I didn't. Anyway, they're
mnemonic plastic. They look cheap
but they aren't. Big guy named
Star, like a golden bear with a huge bristly beard, told me they'd cost
something like 5 million new yen if they sold them, which they don't. He also told me they are a "mesh
networked, micro thermopile powered, molecular computer system with a virtual
retinal display" which I don't understand. But they work, I know that. You put them on and you can see and hear all this stuff that
is and isn't there. Like you can
look at the ground and see where the irrigation pipes are, and then reach out
and touch a little icon and then see instructions on how to fix them. Or look at someone and see their name,
what they are good at, what they don't like – stuff like that. Sometimes it's like cartoons, little
symbols and stuff floating around, other times it's like a ghost world that you
can but then can't see. I'm
writing with them, too. They
showed me how to get them to show me a keyboard, and then I just touch where
the letters are. Kinda cool, but
also kinda creepy.

They use the glasses to
talk to one another. They shoot
videos with them, make cartoons, write poems, do all kinds of things, and send
them to each other. They may look
like primitive, but they're really wizards with this kind of stuff. It makes me sad to think how I know
that, but I do.

“Love with robots will be as normal as love with other humans, while the number of sexual acts and lovemaking positions commonly practiced between humans will be extended, as robots teach more than is in all of the world’s published sex manuals combined.” -computer pioneer David Levy, in Love and Sex With Robots.

Bondage, science fiction, fetishism, real realities and virtual realities collide in this unique collection by one of the most popular authors of erotica … ever!

In the enigmatic M. Christian’s kinky new collection, two great things – technology and sex – go even better together!

Welcome to Technorotica: a giant-sized collection of human-machine erotica. You’ll find everything from sexy robots to virtual reality lovers, from shameless science fiction to contemporary explorations of technology’s impact on our sex lives and our sexuality. Headlining this stellar collection are two unforgettable novellas: In “Hot Definition,” the story of a future just around our corner, Neko experiences the ultimate domination in a way she never expected; in “Speaking Parts,” two lovers, one with a camera-shutter eye, come together in a scorching, obsessive relationship that takes them both to the limits of sexuality – and beyond. Plus ten more provocative stories of sex and technosex.

Monday, July 2, 2012

In celebration of the re-release of my cyberpunk BDSM erotica novel, Painted Doll, here's an except...

... Qui Dan Road to the High Street, a stumble of crisp British in a city of fish sauce and MSG. The change didn’t alter her steps, modify her movements.

Beautiful? Oh, yes: without doubt, without a question. The splendor of a rose, the loveliness of an orchid. The kimono is flawless, as is the china white of her immaculately applied artificial complexion. As she walks, hearts stop then race. As she walks, heads twist, eyes widen. As she walks, breaths are hissed in, sighed out.

Beautiful? Oh, yes: without doubt, without a question. But she is a knife-edged rose, a razor sharp orchid. Her stride is mechanically perfect, as is her perfectly vertical posture. Their hearts might race, their heads may twist, their eyes certainly widen, their breaths absolutely hiss in and hiss out, but as she steps nearer they instead step back. As she walks, they avert their eyes. As she walks, they pull themselves in.

The woman walking down the High Street feels them watching her, their glances furtive tickles, their quick stares barely felt hooks out of the corners of her always forward facing eyes. Passing a bookseller – tight fans of rough tan paper with lurid Cantonese chops on their glistening plastic covers hung in sagging arcs of cord – a reflection was revealed to her, a caught sight of what they were seeing.

But not what they were thinking. But she knew, nevertheless: each of them lost in illusions and fantasies as carefully crafted as her rouge, as flawlessly presented as the mae migoro and ushiro migoro of her kimono, as immaculately assembled as her performance:

She’s a dragon, some might think: the cruelty of a reptile, the flawlessness of a myth. You may approach her, with bravery beyond that of any battlefield, speaking with a stammer and a twitch, and if you were fortunate beyond your worth she’d slow, pause, turn with prudently measured grace, deeming your presence not completely disgusting. With that look, at that glance, would be a flickering forked tongue of cruel invitation, a scintillating promise of peaked breasts topped with fist-tight nipples, a belly steel plate flat and firm, a behind curving out in twin clenches of muscular intensity, thighs sculpted by rigid posture, and between them a scented valley of ruby silk.

But first, a miniscule task. But first, an all but insignificant request: to firmly stand guard for her honor and dignity; to fetch a inestimable gem, an incalculable jewel, or just a unexceptional sticky-sweet pastry; to perform for her a melody of praise, or a stammering litany of desperate worth; or a quick athletic demonstration of physical merit; or become for her an avenging knight, a battle to defend her honor against some heinous offense.

A minuscule task. An insignificant request. Accepted without doubt or hesitation, the reward a slow curl at the corner of her cold stone face, a bow of gratitude, and a bright flash of serpentine green eyes. Totally entranced by her, completely captured by her, the dragon would then reveal the metaphorical points of venomous teeth, sinking the illusion of her love deep into the shaft of your encouraged penis by showing you the true face of her cruelty.

The prize was yours but the tasks were actually anything but miniscule, not at all insignificant: firmly stand guard for her honor and dignity – for a year; fetch a inestimable gem, an incalculable jewel, or just a unexceptional sticky-sweet pastry – from a thousand miles away; perform for her a melody of praise, or a stammering litany of desperate worth – perfectly, without the tiniest flaw; a quick athletic demonstration of physical merit – unattainable by even the greatest athlete; or become for her an avenging knight, a battle to defend her honor against some heinous offense – in combat against a killing machine.

And so the dragon passes by, a smile on her cold-blooded face. No one approaches her, no one is willing to come near. And so they live, by letting her just walk by.

She’s a doll, some might think: a porcelain figure, an ivory representation. Beneath the silks and satins would be a body as perfect as only a master artisan could create. Breasts both delicate and womanly, nipples as delicate as rosebuds, a belly with an ideal swell, hands with the grace of ten Noh performers, calves a perfect taper, thighs an entrancing form, back a clean surface of alabaster, neck a musical curve, feet delicate and precious, a behind highlighted with sacral dimples, and a female cleft that was a pale oyster and a tiny pink pearl.

Like a doll, she would belong to whoever buys her. Cash, credit, merchandise – the right amount and the woman would instead walk behind, following her owner towards palace or hovel, both with the same unmoving mask of her face.

Palace or hovel, she would walk in the door, standing still and quiet with an item’s posture. Maybe she’d look better in the living room window, where the afternoon would bathe her in golden light? Or perhaps she’d be better exhibited in the bedroom, where her kimono could be removed like one from a real woman.

Yes, the bedroom. That was where she would be best displayed. Moving past, it was clear in their eyes, the allure of her perfect submission. A thing. An object. A piece of feminine sculpture. Unable to disagree, unable to refuse, bendable in all kinds of imaginative ways. From behind, cock sliding between her cool ivory cheeks. Face to face, marble breasts for unimpeded kiss, licks, and sucks. On top, her tight thighs spread apart and welcoming upward thrusts. Anything you wanted, anytime you wanted.

Desire was a rippling wave behind her, a heat distortion in the warm city air. It was obvious in their eyes that there, in her, was a world without ‘no,’ a land without complaint, a woman without a soul.

Then they stopped, that wave of erections and licked dry lips chilled with a slap of frigid revelation. Stepping back with the rest of the crowd, these men retreated from the precise rhythm of her steps, with whimpering fear in their wide eyes, their shaking heads.

Ivory arms, marble legs, alabaster body: inflexible, unfeeling, stiff, unbending, unyielding, and -- worst of all -- cold. With her you’d never hear ‘no,’ never be refused, never be denied, but you’d also never hear the beat of her heart, the music of her voice, the chimes of her laughter, the moans and screams of her pleasure. You’d perform with her your deepest, darkest, most subterranean – and all she would do would be to look at you with inscrutably glass eyes.

She’s a tiger, some might think: a beast with the stripes of a traditional Japanese dress. Hidden beneath her Asian camouflage was a woman’s body, exercised into an extension of her erotic drive. Where other women had euphemisms and poetic alliterations, she had simple, direct, and powerful words to describe herself. Where other women had bosoms, she had tits of ideal jiggle and sway, covered in thrilling smooth skin. Where other women had nipples, she had a pair of dark brown direct connections to her clit. Where other women had posteriors, she had two plush muscular globes that clenched and released with the beating heat of her clit. Where other women had sexes, she had a demanding, insistent cunt.

To see and handle these differences would be more fortune than seduction. You did not take the tiger to dinner and slip hot words between dessert and coffee. You did not lay flowers at the feet of this hot blooded woman within the cool disguise of a geisha. You did not whisper poetry into the shell-like ear of this elegantly robed bitch.

There was no way to make her do anything, no way to slyly allure or simply trick her into a private room, no way to seduce her. The only thing anyone could do was to stand within the range of that sweeping predatory glance and hope that her eyes would positively estimate your worth as a device for her pleasure. Then, and only then, would her red-painted lips open ever-so, more than a whisper but less than full voice, and speak the one word you’d prayed to hear: “Come.”

Behind her, pulled along by her insatiable need, you would follow. It wouldn’t be a long journey, for her cunt has a very short attention span. Cheap hotel on the next street, expensive one even closer by, or just the nearest fetid and slimy alley – whatever was within range.

Patience was for ladies. Hesitation was for women. Tigers – even ones hidden within silks and satins – had no need for foreplay, patience, or hesitation. They wanted, so they took.

And if you were lucky, she would take you. Hands down to your cock, a squeezing judgment for size and firmness. Lips to yours, a tongue penetrating your mouth, am attacking kiss wanting nothing of you but to be kindling to her roaring heat.

On her knees, she would take you. But only because that was what she wanted. Your come was not expected or important. A flesh device to penetrate an orifice, you would be used until she was bored and ready to move onto other penetrations of other orifices.

At the end, your cock would be needed: hard, strong, and fast -- nothing else important to her. Burning hot, insanely wet, you’d enter and execute the task she’d ordered, working until her screams tore at your ears and her nails scratched along your back.

Then that would be it. Humiliating? Being reduced to only a device for someone’s pleasure usually is. But the blistering heat of her, the ferocious need of her cunt would put – and keep – a smile on your sweaty face.

But – and again men standing step back, retreat in shivering dread when she walks back – one does not ever tame a tiger, even after it is fed. Who knows what she might hunger for after? Meat, blood, flesh, dignity, any number of horrible violations – any of them within her grasp, and you too exhausted to resist.

She’s a machine, some might think: isn’t it wonderful what they’re doing with shape memory alloys, mnemetic plastics, optical fibers, and conductive polymers? Absolutely wonderful things coming out of Japan, India, the Wilding, and the young turks of the École Polytechnique, these days. Look up and there are dragonfliers pausing for location fixes before darting off at near-invisible speeds, packages clutched under their iridescent fuselages. Look down and there are myriad scurrying mechanisms trailing polished tracks of perfumed cleanliness through the city’s persistent grime. Look around and there are cinematics lazily scrolling across a lady’s fluttering fan, posters for the newest Malasian blockbuster cycling through tantalizing glimpses of furious martial arts and stiffly chaste duets, the hushed commuting fuel-cell and ethanol traffic, and the softly creaking carbon fibers of a prosthetic hand on a crumble-faced veteran of the Chinese genocide as he lays down a mah-jongg tile.

Look at her and you might see a device as carefully machined as a German car, a Swiss watch, a Japanese entertainment center, Indian software, or an African running shoe: breasts as ideal and resilient as silicone, skin of perfectly cured plastic, muscles as precise and strong as actuators, a genital-pleasuring interface between her thighs, a mouth with the same technology.

It was a safe bet that without her protective kimono covering, the pseudo-body of hers was as superlative as a supermodel, as sensuous as a Playmate of whatever month, as adept as an amalgamation of every courtesan who’d ever lived, as refined and machined as her manufacturers could make her.

Movement like the architecture in fine software, presence as authoritative as graceful as a jet fighter, skin as smooth as the polish on a fresh-from-the-factory-floor Ferrari, she passed by – and with her passing the tracking of lust and greed in the eyes of the male crowd, and sour envy on the faces of everyone else.

Here was the best of both of a man’s world: the twin allures of a clever device together with a well-articulated woman – or, to be more specific, as those men revealed so obviously, ‘coupled’ together, a mating between flesh and sex and advanced technology and power. Purchasing this – or simply leasing with an option to do the same – and putting it in the garage or the bedroom, would mean not just a product but also a woman of every dream, not just a sex partner but also a sophisticated piece of fine engineering.

But that wasn’t all. Look at them watching her move by. Lust was there, both for machine as well as woman, but there was also the dawning realization that there could be even more there: things that squeezed, buzzed, vibrated, hummed, heated, cooled, swirled, oscillated, tingled, and more, more, more so much more.

But then they pulled away, out of her way, out of her traffic, their fantasies dropping behind to be passed by the rushing acceleration of a nightmare, the barreling truck of a terrifying understanding.

Engineering, went their minds as they retreated, is fine and good, stimulating and thrilling. Sex, they thought as they ran away from her, is fantastic and wonderful. But to fuck a machine, to be intimate with gears and cogs, synthetics and electricity, hydraulics and radiators, could be good, but also could be like thrusting into a meshing, tearing, burning, shocking, scalding, blistering industrial accident.

Skin Effect

Bachelor Machine

Betty Came

Technorotica

Rude Mechanicals

Better Than The Real Thing

Love Without Gun Control

The Painted Doll

Finger's Breadth

How To Write And Sell Erotica

Calling M.Christian versatile is a
tremendous understatement. Extensively published in science fiction, fantasy,
horror, thrillers, and even non-fiction, it is in erotica that M.Christian has
become an acknowledged master, with stories in such anthologies as
Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Bisexual
Erotica, Best Fetish Erotica, and in fact too many anthologies, magazines, and
sites to name.In erotica,
M.Christian is known and respected not just for his passion on the page but
also his staggering imagination and chameleonic ability to successfully and
convincingly write for any and all orientations.

But M.Christian has other tricks up
his literary sleeve: in addition to writing, he is a prolific and respected
anthologist, having edited 25 anthologies to date including the Best S/M
Erotica series; Pirate Booty; My Love For All That Is Bizarre: Sherlock Holmes
Erotica; The Burning Pen; The Mammoth Book of Future Cops, and The Mammoth Book
of Tales of the Road (with Maxim Jakubowksi); Confessions, Garden of Perverse,
and Amazons (with Sage Vivant), and many more.

M.Christian's short fiction has been
collected into many bestselling books in a wide variety of genres, including
the Lambda Award finalist Dirty Words and other queer collections like Filthy
Boys, BodyWork, and his best-of-his-best gay erotica book, Stroke the
Fire.He also has collections of
non-fiction (Welcome to Weirdsville, Pornotopia, and How To Write And Sell
Erotica); science fiction, fantasy and horror (Love Without Gun Control); and
erotic science fiction including Rude Mechanicals, Technorotica, Better Than
The Real Thing, and the acclaimed Bachelor Machine.

As a novelist, M.Christian has shown
his monumental versatility with books such as the queer vamp novels Running Dry
and The Very Bloody Marys; the erotic romance Brushes; the science fiction
erotic novel Painted Doll; and the rather controversial gay horror/thrillers
Finger's Breadth and Me2.

M.Christian is also the Associate
Publisher for Renaissance eBooks,
where he strives to be the publisher he'd want to have as a writer, and to help
bring quality books (erotica, noir, science fiction, and more) and authors out
into the world.